Preface

Efforts to develop Biotechnology in Brazil exceed three decades. Almost coincident with the advent of the recombinant DNA technology which became publically known early in the seventies when Herbert Boyer expressed the insulin gene in E.coli. A couple of scientists in Brazil repeated this experience almost at the same time and the interest for the area came to the agenda of a public company called EMBRAPA founded in the seventies to work with agricultural research in Brazil. The author built in EMBRAPA since 1980 a platform to develop plant genetic engineering training young scientists in areas such as plant cell and molecular biology to be able to incorporate this nascent technology to the plant breeding efforts of EMBRAPA. This work took place at CENARGEN –The National Center for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology the most prominent institution working in this area for the last three decades. The public perception in Brazil and many other countries was turned against this new technology for political reasons and when the first engineered soybean resistant to glyphosate was released commercially a campaign against transgenic plants prevented the application of this technology in agriculture for almost a decade in Brazil. The world however adopted recombinant DNA technology in the pharmaceutical area and most products utilized internationally by the public in this industry including Brazil are genetically engineered. Brazil tried to follow the growth of Biology commercially and introduced in consonance to TRIPS legislations to protect intellectually the applications of biology in genetics since the mid nineties. That was necessary but not sufficient. We had to deal with a rampant inflation for decades and had to train a number of scientists for the same time as well as investing institutionally in the area of Biotechnology. This E Book tells this story and is written now because apparently after Brazil became an emerging power financially it seems there are more opportunities now than before. So, this EBook is intended for those who want to know some of the history of Biotechnology in Brazil, since its inception, hopefully to conclude positively about the power of this technology and the opportunities we have in our hands now ,that were not in the context of this now called life science innovation area when we started these efforts at CENARGEN in 1980. Brazil may become a relevant actor in this area internationally taking advantage of some circumstances here that are not available in other countries , particularly our biodiversity. We make explicit indicators to support this thesis but the EBook describes adjustments that must be made to assure the success of our investments particularly to the laws – the regulatory framework , that are at the base of this crescent international market. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the Nature Biotechnology blog, Trade Secrets, which initially published several discussions found in this e-book. The collection of those original blog posts can be found here: http://blogs.nature.com/tradesecrets/author/lbarreto.